It's been raining here too; for weeks now with no particular end in sight.

I’m mainly Scots-Irish, and therefore genetically incapable of understanding cricket, but I’m still glowing from some lovely-ish footy by the good old USA last week. Darn those Brazilians!



I haven’t had a chance to track down the E.K. Chambers work that the other of our two incomparable Toms cited, but perhaps Mr. Reedy will oblige us sometime.



That was Tom’s terminology, and while it was fine for his purpose in that argument, it is a little too vague to have this different argument held to it. I think it could as well be said that she used plays to “defend against foreign Catholics and woo domestic ones.”



Cecil’s Puritan approach would be pretty good for the purpose of defense against foreign Catholics, and I would suspect that he was passing unfavorable information about foreigners – Phillip, Mary Stuart, etc., - on to playwrights for their use in 1559 rather than having much to do with the writing of the plays.



Thank you.



It doesn’t particularly seem to me like Elizabeth ended up thinking so either; I think that she became as disillusioned with her temperamental, irresponsible, unpredictable, genius artiste, who had this disturbing propensity to tell too much of the truth and kept yanking on his leash, as Oxford became with the golden leash that had looked so good to begin with but more and more kept him from saying everything he wanted to say in the way he wanted to say it.

-Although, of course, the Armada was defeated, England was never invaded, Elizabeth was never assassinated, and no true fifth column ever rose up against her. Instead we have the Cult of Gloriana. One has to wonder how much of that was due to the enormous number of lines of plays and poetry that were indirectly or directly about her…



Well, the scene where Henry VI prophesizes the future Henry VII, for one. Continuity of the royal line is thereby established in people’s minds. The Lancastrians are saints; the Tudors are their chosen heirs, not usurpers. If one is simply trying not to offend those in power, this scene is entirely unnecessary and would never be missed, since it never actually happened. It only makes sense as deliberate propaganda.

And to stay with the Star Wars analogy, even by the end of the first movie the audience knew who the good guys and bad guys were, they knew who should win in the end and they had a pretty good idea of what the overall message and themes of the story were.



Dating these four is pretty easy and uncontroversial, I think, within a certain fuzzy boundary. Terminus ad quem is the publication of Holinshed’s second edition in 1587. At least the first of the three parts of Henry VI was known to be playing during 1592, and Greene made his famous “Tyger’s hart” reference from part 3 also in 1592, so it is at least possible that the three parts came out spaced very closely together, and could all have been playing at the same time. It is also possible that Greene had an advance look at an unfinished manuscript.

“Anti-Catholic propaganda” meant for domestic consumption did not have to be “anti-Catholic” in its actual content, and making it such would have turned off the intended audience. Much of it was “anti-foreigner” and “anti-rebellion” in content.



I would actually directly compare the two tetralogies to the two Star Wars trilogies. The first epic comprises the later sequence of events, the second epic goes back several generations to explore the roots of the conflict. Both Star Wars trilogies are seriously propagandistic in their own way – the second trilogy is far more heavy-handed in its political viewpoint, as Lucas increasingly used the Empire as a metaphor for the Bush Administration.



I agree completely that there is a distinction, but I disagree that these plays can be said to fall wholly within the “self-preservation” side of things. I think that the author has a viewpoint and expresses it powerfully. I don’t believe he writes this way simply to please the censors or because he is being paid to do so. I believe that he writes this way because he has passion for his cause, and will use his art to advance his cause as best he can, regardless of other possible considerations.

Hi Nessus,


I don't see that at all - my argument is that the plays are for all intents and purposes religion/religious-free zones. There is precious little - nothing that I can discern - to suggest that the plays may have been written in part with the intention of 'defending against foreign Catholics', let alone 'wooing domestic ones'.

To me, this absence of pro-Anglicanism and/or anti-Roman Catholicism is remarkable. If, as you argue, the author was a state-commissioned propagandist, I would expect to see him bigging up the new religion and kicking seven bells out of the old. And especially kicking seven bells out of the Spanish variety of Roman Catholics, and the Pope who had excommunicated Elizabeth and granted absolution for anyone rising up against and overthrowing her and/or being responsible for her death.

Question: where is the play about the 'defeat' of the Armada?


What do you think it was that he wanted to say (that he didn't say)?


That is exactly my point. The Cult of Gloriana was a reality, it was huge. Poets, writers, balladeers, artists and musicians were falling over themselves to contribute to the Cult, to lay their sycophantic outpourings at Britomart's feet. Astraea and the return of the Golden Age; what do the plays contribute to this?


No argument with that example. That's one, then. And I agree, the cameo does only make sense if read as a very big nod to the Tudor dynasty. I would argue, however, that any writer, writing about such a tricky period of recent history, would not be averse to a bit of toadying - the writer didn't have to be the state's chief propagandist to write that little scene. And this example leaves nothing to chance, does it, the message is unmistakeable, direct, easy to grasp, like all good propaganda.

I don't see this example as undercutting my argument, in fact it strengthens it. I think that, broadly speaking, the unlikelihood of the 'state-commissioned writer of propaganda through plays' is precisely because examples of this kind are so few and far between (in fact this is about the sum of it, isn't it?). For a thousand a year I'd expect at least a couple per play. Especially in the earlier plays, when the author hadn't yet become cheesed off and disillusioned with the paymaster.


Elizabethan audiences knew the ending before the plays were written - some of them would have actually lived through the 'ending'. Most of them certainly lived through the most cathartic event(s) of the century - Henry VIII's repudiation of Rome, his son establishing the Protestant Church in England, Mary going back to the future, and finally Elizabeth establshing her Anglican religious settlement. I think it's sometimes overlooked that this wasn't just a series of seismic spiritual upheavals of profound significance. There were also profound social, economic and political consequences which continued to reverberate throughout Gloriana's reign.

And yet our 'social commentator' doesn't commentate on any of them, doesn't do the government message, Pope bad, Anglicanism good. The culmination of this was Spain's Papal-backed and Papal-blessed attempted invasion of England. As Elizabeth herself said, the Pope and Spanish were "the enemies of my God and my people." The biggest seller of the century was Fox's (Protestant) Martyrs.

Yet, look in vain for an anti-Roman Catholic sentiment in the plays, or for that matter a pro-Anglican sentiment. It is this curious feature that, in part, leads some people, including me, to the view that the author may have had Roman Catholic sympathies.

Certainly it leads me to the view that if the author were to have been a state-commissioned propagandist, his paymasters got very little indeed by way of a return for the huge amount of money they outlaid. You have made some excellent points about strong female characters in the plays and that is a very definite plus to your argument, but for mine there has to be more to justify a thousand a year.


What, like the murderers flourished? It's been going on more or less - more than less in fact - since the Conquest, but in our general period think Edward III, Henry IV, Edward IV, Henry VII. It isn't just the kings, though - a lot of barons did okay out of the ringing of the changes too.


I agree, but there is a number of dissenting voices.


Again, I agree, and think it pretty-much incontrovertible, although as you know a fierce debate has raged over whether Greene's 'Tyger's hart' reference can be tied to 3 Henry VI.


As to the first, I understand your point but we will have to disagree. As for it being anti-foreigner and anti-rebellion, then again we must agree to disagree, other than as far as being anti-rebellion the author is, in that sense, entirely conventional, even if many see Cade, Bolingbroke et al in a different light from you.


What, then, is his cause? Or is this where we came in out of the rain, and Hamlet?

Clive

Greetings. My first post.

Consider Elizabeth, Cecil, Walsingham and Leicester. With their non-unanimous views on religion, geo-politics and waging war, the notion that we can or should find today evidence of a single, identifiable, coherent Tudor "policy" on plays is thin. Debates occurred. Views evolved. Advisors changed. Joint decisions were made, revisited, revised, yes? Some public play plans and projects probably ended far differetly than they were originally intended (e.g., the Massacre at Paris - "love the title" and Dr. Faustus). Or were likely amended or killed after subsequent facts on the ground changed materially (e.g., ridiculing the Scots in Edward III probably caused this play's shelving).

Also, how many theater groundlings or merchant class members lit a candle at night and settled in for an illuminating night reading or rereading their copy of Holinshed or Hall? If the answer to that question is "not a lot," then the history plays strategically targeted a part of the public not current on their British chronicles.

Cheers.

Thanks Tamburlaine I think you have nicely captured why a common denominator within such competing views could never have been the impetus or inspiration of "Shakespeare".

Thus the reason we cannot find the evidence of a coherent policy is thus very much more likely and almost certainly because none ever existed.

I just personally cannot understand why that is not more obvious.

To finally get back to the second half of this loooong thread...



On balance I have to agree that Margaret of Anjou is a bad example, although her portrayal is still quite slanted compared to historical record. I think that's more of a Tudor thing than an Elizabeth thing per se. I don’t think either of the other two could easily be portrayed in a way that Elizabeth would see as standing in well for her. Not as many parallels there as with Richard II, for example.



It’s as interesting to me that Shakespeare does not attempt to leaven them with anything of the old religion either, as even when they are set in a necessarily Catholic background there is essentially nothing of Catholic cant, but a great deal of the concepts the two religions held in common.



As well, no pro-Catholic or pro-Pope sentiments, or even the appearance or discussion of the Pope. The author stays away from religion and religious subjects as much as possible, seemingly preferring to talk about English nationalism and foreign perfidy a whole lot.

Do you disagree that general neutrality on religion as long as it does not threaten the government is substantially the position the Queen took?



To return to the Star Wars analogy, the fact that by the end of the second movie (in both trilogies) the evil characters have greatly prospered and the good side is scattered and on the run does not make the evil side look any less evil to the audience.

I think the author’s attitude towards traitors is fairly obvious throughout:

O, how hast thou with jealousy infected
The sweetness of affiance! Show men dutiful?
Why, so didst thou. Seem they grave and learnèd?
Why, so didst thou. Come they of noble family?
Why, so didst thou. Seem they religious?
Why, so didst thou. Or are they spare in diet,
Free from gross passion or of mirth or anger,
Constant in spirit, not swerving with the blood,
Garnished and decked in modest complement,
Not working with the eye without the ear,
And but in purgèd judgment trusting neither?
Such and so finely bolted didst thou seem;
And thus thy fall hath left a kind of blot
To mark the full-fraught man and best indued
With some suspicion. I will weep for thee;
For this revolt of thine, methinks, is like
Another fall of man. Their faults are open.
Arrest them to the answer of the law;
And God acquit them of their practices!

-Henry V



From your contributions to the Policy of Plays thread. Emphasis is mine:

“It has, however, been pointed out, on this thread, that Chorus was almost entirely omitted from Henry V. My own subsequent research confirmed that Chorus's epilogue had indeed been omitted, and this was also duly noted on the thread. So the presaging of a 'sequel' is doubtful… To me, Chorus's epilogue looks like a much later and more reflective addition, almost as some sort of reality check on the euphoric, jingoistic tone of the original play.”

“…it is likely that the {R2} deposition scene was omitted from script and performance until some time after the Essex rising.”

It seems to me as if you’re trying to have it both ways, my friend. There seems to be a consensus on the part of Stratfordians, Oxfordians and historians that both the epilogue and the deposition scene were added much later.



“What madness, this, citizens! What lawlessness so great of the sword, while nations are your hate, for you to shed the Latian blood? And, while proud Babylon was to be spoiled of the Ausonian trophies, and the shade of Crassus was wandering unavenged, has it pleased you that wars, doomed to produce no triumphs, should be waged? Alas! How much of land and of sea might have been won with that self-same blood which the right-hands of fellow-citizens have shed.
…
Then, Home, if so great thy love for an accursed warfare, when thou hast subjected the whole earth to Latian laws, turn thy hands against thyself; not as yet has a foe been wanting to thee. But now that the walls are tottering with the dwellings half overthrown throughout the cities of Italy, and the fortifications falling away, vast stones are lying there, and the houses are occupied by no protector, and but few inhabitants are wandering amid the ancient cities, that Hesperia has remained unsightly with brambles and un-
ploughed for many a year, and that hands are wanting for the fields requiring them not thou, fierce Pyrrhus, nor yet the Carthaginian, will prove the cause of ruin so great; to no sword has it been allowed to penetrate the vitals; deep-seated are the wounds of the fellow-citizen's right hand.”

It does seem very much as if the author is trying to convince his readers of something. I'm not sure how this is relevant to my point, however.



Ah, I thought you were talking about H5, not R2.

First of all, the original play did not show a usurpation, but suggested an abdication. Second, it is widely thought that certain portions of the play were intended to show Elizabeth and Richard in a softer light as somewhat analogous, the very reason that Elizabeth was so touchy about the later use of the play to suggest that she should be deposed. Third, Essex’s famous use of R2 and Eliza’s jaundiced remarks were very much later. Fourth, we don’t know for certain that the Shakespeare play and Essex’s play were the same script. Fifth, we don’t know who added the deposition scene, so that this is to be regarded as a “conscious and deliberate subtext” on the part of the author is without support.



Why is that less concrete than the evidence, say, for Oxford’s annuity being only about his poverty?

Golding’s note is also supported by evidence for other points that he mentions; i.e., the April 12 birthdate, and him being Steward of Essex Forest.



I’m sure he did, but I hear they liked plays too.
This is James we’re talking about after all. Rex fuit Elizabeth, nunc est regina Jacobus.



“James's interest in literature was tied in with a shrewd sense of propaganda. He realised that books, masques, sermons, and plays could all be employed in the service of the king, that they were the media which could best disseminate his views of kingship and impress upon a large number of people its power and majesty. The court masque, expensive and elaborate, baroque and ritualistic, symbolised that power and majesty, and the king's physical place as the focal point of the entertainment reinforced it further. Thus James and Queen Anne patronised Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones, the great architect and designer of the sets for Jonson's masques. “

- http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/james/jamesbio.htm

I don’t really get why historians can say this kind of thing all the time about any number of monarchs with no problem, and yet the idea that Elizabeth may have tried to manipulate the media for propaganda purposes seems to blow so many fuses.



Sounds like some good entertainment, the basic elements of drama. The closest contemporary example would be Western movies, which are mostly about the same thing. The propaganda portion of both lies in how far one is willing to bend the history to suit the producer’s biases.




The message of Julius Caesar is readily apparent, wouldn’t you think? Traitors against a superlative ruler get their just desserts only after causing war and great suffering. Don’t kill the King. Civil war is bad. God doesn’t like it. It is certainly more subtle and entertaining than Lucan was in saying pretty much the same thing.

First known showing of Julius is in 1599, among worries about the succession and possible uprisings and civil war. Along a continuum of Oxford’s disillusionment, it fits that there is less direct support of the ruler himself and more about the horrors of succession by violence. “I come to bury Ceasar, not to praise him.”

On the other hand, Othello, Hamlet and Lear were all very late plays, not seen until after Elizabeth’s death. I see these as plays that could not have been published precisely because their subject matter was anti-Gloriana.



However many times it’s been said, it’s still not universally true. Good propaganda is often subtle, indirect and source-disguised. Few in the West ever believed the bombastic Communist Party propaganda, but subtler KGB propaganda planted in Western publications very often went viral and was taken as fact by people who would not have believed the Soviet government saying the same thing more directly.



Among others. That the Tudor dynasty are not usurpers as the Pope had been saying, for another. That treason is bad. That foreigners are bad. That women can be strong and stand up to men without the world blowing up.



Why didn’t Leni Riefenstahl come straight out and say, “Hitler is really cool!”? Why didn’t Golan-Globus just subtitle half their action films, “Israel=good! Arabs=bad!”? Why didn’t George Lucas just post “I hate George Bush” on his website? Why didn’t the producers of “24” just call it “The Ticking Time Bomb Scenario”?

Because artists convince by using their art? Because some degree of subtlety and entertainment value is necessary in artistic propaganda in order to keep people listening?



I disagree that such was a “better” propaganda job when the play is still being read and some of the false history believed by readers still 400 years later. I also disagree that it was a “better” propaganda job at the time, especially for the significant portion of the population that still could not read. I also disagree that it was “better” at reaching Catholics who would have seen Hall as obviously biased towards Protestants, which he made clear in the title by lionizing Henry VIII.



I accept that theory in its entirety, I just assert that it is but half the story. I believe that the government told just enough of the truth to be believable, without having to go into why this particular peer was so destitute in the first place, or why this particular peer was the only one besides Walsingham who was getting such an annuity.

Consider the Ninth Earl of Percy:

“Then were my felicities (because I knew not better) hawks, hounds, horses, dice, cards, apparel, mistresses; all other riot of expense that follow them were so far afoot and in excess as I knew not where I was, or what I did, till out of my means of {3,000 pounds} yearly I had made shift in one year and a half to be {15,000 pounds} in debt.”

Percy cut down valuable woods, sold off all his lands not entailed, made terrible deals with tenants, all for the short-term income to pay off his debts. Not a farthing did he get from the Queen. He is hardly unique, this pattern was repeated across the nobility as they spent themselves nearly out of existence within the next few generations. I would feel much more appeal from the “just an annuity” theory if it could be shown that any other of those destitute Earls had ever received such assistance. The best I can find is Hatton, who received a 400-pound annuity, and Walsingham, of course. Both were providing valuable services to the Queen as members of the government. Show me one other person who received an annuity simply because he was destitute.

Very insightful Nessus. If only you might consider substituting a singular and specific attendee of the play for "his readers" and I think with equal or even less insight you might realize the answer yourself to what the playwright is trying to convey. If you were paying attention I've already spelled this out by the way.

As for the whole of your theory I hope I've made myself clear. Not that you are likely interested.

Never mind the previous post. Of course this is from "The Pharsalia of Lucan". Though I would be curious to know what translation your excerpt is from.

Saw some interesting metaphor embedded in there but just some active imagination I suppose.

Oy. You're right, that's a terrible translation. I must have looked it up at work. This one is much better.

http://omacl.org/Pharsalia/

Whence, citizens, this rage, this boundless lust
To sate barbarians with the blood of Rome?
Did not the shade of Crassus, wandering still,
Cry for his vengeance? Could ye not have spoiled,
To deck your trophies, haughty Babylon?
Why wage campaigns that send no laurels home?
What lands, what oceans might have been the prize
Of all the blood thus shed in civil strife!
Where Titan rises, where night hides the stars,
'Neath southern noons all quivering with heat,
Or where keen frost that never yields to spring
In icy fetters binds the Scythian main:
Long since barbarians by the Eastern sea
And far Araxes' stream, and those who know
(If any such there be) the birth of Nile
Had felt our yoke. Then, Rome, upon thyself
With all the world beneath thee, if thou must,
Wage this nefarious war, but not till then.

Now view the houses with half-ruined walls
Throughout Italian cities; stone from stone
Has slipped and lies at length; within the home
No guard is found, and in the ancient streets so
Scarce seen the passer by. The fields in vain,
Rugged with brambles and unploughed for years,
Ask for the hand of man; for man is not.
Nor savage Pyrrhus nor the Punic horde
E'er caused such havoc: to no foe was given
To strike thus deep; but civil strife alone
Dealt the fell wound and left the death behind.
Yet if the fates could find no other way
For Nero coming, nor the gods with ease
Gain thrones in heaven; and if the Thunderer
Prevailed not till the giant's war was done,
Complaint is silent. For this boon supreme
Welcome, ye gods, be wickedness and crime;
Thronged with our dead be dire Pharsalia's fields,
Be Punic ghosts avenged by Roman blood;
Add to these ills the toils of Mutina;
Perusia's dearth; on Munda's final field
The shock of battle joined; let Leucas' Cape
Shatter the routed navies; servile hands
Unsheath the sword on fiery Etna's slopes:
Still Rome is gainer by the civil war.
Thou, Caesar, art her prize.

-------

I take it back: It's very relevant to my point. Lucan was writing both flattery for his Emperor, who had given him a high position at a young age, and propaganda against further civil unrest, since that Emperor happened to be Nero, who tended to cause civil unrest merely by getting out of bed.

Nessus,


I don't think you could be further wide of the mark. Pharsalia is certainly not flattery of Nero, and in my view there are no elements of what we would normally define as propaganda present, regardless of which translation you use. The 'war worse than civil [bella plus quam civilia]' which Lucan writes about is his gateway to his present - the Rome of Nero. When he writes of the horrors of this 'war' they are the horrors of his present, not of a century earlier. The entire epic is a sustained and unremitting outpouring of rage, a political and ideological protest against the the loss of liberty under the tyranny of Caesarism. But whose liberty, and which Caesar? The Republic's liberty and of course his own, and the Caesar is 'his' Caesar, Nero. Lucan is not writing history. Pharsalia is not history as such, or even much about history, it is Lucan subverting history to protest against 'specious grandeur that seeks to hide genuine evil'. But like Ovid, when he knew Augustus Caesar would not return him from exile and to imperial favour, Lucan makes clear where he is coming from, and going to - "Our Pharsalia will live, no generation will banish us to the shadows!" It's an ironic but wonderful paradox that Caesar (Nero) consigns the corporeal Lucan to the shadows (and probably his father, too), but Nero is actually Lucan's ticket to immortality.

Clive

Nessus,


I am a great admirer of your research and interpretations. And your good-humoured patience. You’ve put in more yards, and more coherent and credible explanations in relation to the ‘commissioning’ of the plays, and the annuity, than anyone else I’ve read in Oxfordian print. I enjoy these exchanges immensely, and you always leave me with plenty to think about.


Stands in for Elizabeth? I know you are serious, but I can’t take the suggestion seriously.


Why would he? And what is this ‘great deal of the concepts the two religions held in common’ – what does that mean in context? The plain fact is that the plays reveal no anti-Catholic bias, implicit or explicit. This, especially, in context of the Oxfordian theory that the plays were paid state propaganda, and in context of the Counter-Reformation, Papal blessing of a ‘holy’ war against Elizabeth, the Pope’s excommunication of Elizabeth, and his declaration that the queen could be killed without offence to God or the Roman Catholic church. To my way of thinking that is remarkable. Taken with the absence of anything promoting Anglicanism, it is my view that the author of the plays had a Roman Catholic inclination. That alone makes the ‘pay for plays’ notion unlikely. Why do you think Golding (uncle) admonished de Vere to stay on the religious straight and narrow?


Yes, I disagree, and in particular to the extent we are discussing the period post 1586 (when the annuity was granted).


I don’t see that citing the pre-Agincourt chastisement of the would-be plotters against Henry V proves your point. Especially given that Cambridge’s line was to come to its ultimate fruition in Edward IV.


This relates to Henry V. I’m not sure of your point in quoting it, except to make me look good, for which many thanks.


It’s not a case of trying to have it both ways. Many of the views I form change shape as time passes – I’m sure that’s true for you. The ‘experts’ say that most of the abdication/deposition scene and all of the murder scene in Richard II were absent from the Quartos published up to 1601 (and beyond). That can’t be ignored. Except that, as I continue to ponder this intriguing issue, I keep coming back to a very simple question: if the play is so ‘harmless’, if it doesn’t deal with the deposition and murder of kings, why did the Essex conspirators choose it as their Rebellion Eve rev up? If it was sans deposition and murder, what was it about the play that aroused the authorities to launch an investigation into its performance? In my view, one answer may be that the deposition scene at least, and maybe also the murder scene, were in fact being performed notwithstanding the Quartos. Hence, during the subsequent enquiry into the circumstances of the Essex performance, Augustine Phillips refers to the play as "the deposing and killing of King Richard." It's hard to ignore that bit of contemporary evidence, in my view.

I don’t take my eye of John Hayward’s Life and Raine of King Henrie IIII, which I firmly believe is in this mix somewhere, somehow. The Essex connection looms big here.


Widely?


No, we don’t, and as you know I’ve previously advanced the possibility that the play may not have been the Shakespeare number but something based on Hayward’s history, which would explain nearly everything, including the Essex connections.


Are you suggesting that someone other than Shakespeare was responsible for the extras? Also, I don't know if you are quoting me with the 'conscious and deliberate subtext' but I hope I'm not guilty of using such an expression in relation to the deposition and/or murder scene.


Why? Well there is documentary evidence for all of the known appointees to the Privy Council for 1603 and 1604. So, to take an example dear to my heart, de Vere’s cousin and erstwhile drinking chum, Henry Howard, was appointed by the new king as a PC in 1603 – that’s a matter of documentary record. It occurs to me that if de Vere had been similarly appointed, there is no reason that I can think of why it would not be similarly documented. But it isn’t. Percival Golding also wrote that de Vere was buried in Westminster Abbey, yet there’s no record of that, either. Still, I didn’t say Golding was wrong, I merely said he’s the only evidence for James appointing de Vere to the Privy Council.

As for Golding’s evidence being ‘less concrete’ than the evidence for de Vere’s penury being the reason for the annuity, well, I know that you know how many documented references to de Vere’s annuity there are to back this up – they’ve all appeared on these boards – so I’ll not stay to argue it yet another time.


I’m not speaking for ‘historians’, just me, but I think this is not one of your better arguments. I’m not aware of anyone who makes that claim about Elizabeth – do you have a ‘for instance’? The argument here is not about that at all - as has already been noted, Strong, Anglo, Yates, Tillyard and many others have conclusively demonstrated the contrary. No my dear friend and honorary cobber, the fuses blow when it is claimed that the plays were commissioned as paid state propaganda pieces in return for an annuity (or as you argue later, in part in return for an annuity). Until and if you can illustrate the propaganda value of the plays, point to the ‘propaganda’, show how the Government got its money’s worth over the ensuing eighteen years, then you’ll continue to have to re-set the tripped fuses. It’s not so much the lack of documentary evidence for your theory that hurts the 'plays for pay theory, it’s more that you and Oxfordians generally just can’t point to the chapter and verse of the alleged propaganda in the plays.


It does sound like good entertainment, and it is, but your argument is that it is good propaganda for the ruling dynasty, which in my view it is not.


I don’t look for contemporary examples, especially where they cast no light on the problem at hand.


No, I don’t think that.


I like your interpretation, but Caesar wanting to be and/or acting like a king in a Republic was the whole problem. The greatest Roman emperor of them all spent a lot of time and energy promoting the fiction that he was merely primus inter pares.

Lucan isn’t subtle, is he? He would have made a good propagandist, not like Shakespeare.


That’s a very interesting proposition, and I see now more clearly the point of some of the comments from your previous post. Food for thought.


Undoubtedly. But most often it is clear, concise and simple – the KISS principle – playing to the lowest common denominator. That’s when it’s at its most effective. For a thousand quid I don’t want ambiguity, indirectness, subtlety, nuance: I want the target audience to GET the message, first time, every time.


It’s still happening, in many guises. But recourse to the ‘now’ doesn’t really address the ‘then’.


I have no idea, and frankly don’t see the relevance. Does answering any of these give me the answer to de Vere/Shakespeare?


All of that, and more. But the art of propaganda is not necessarily about convincing the audience, but rather more about being credible, reinforcing existing mores, predispositions, inclinations and beliefs. It’s about making people want to believe and making it easy for them to believe. There is a considerable element of preaching to the converted. There’s no need for either great art or subtlety.


I’m not sure if I’m understanding you correctly here, I may be losing your drift. But it is very unconvincing to argue that, in terms of message and getting it across, Hall’s ‘propaganda’ was inferior to Shakespeare’s. I wonder if I haven’t expressed myself very well here. The fact that ‘the play’ is propaganda (which play, incidentally?) is still humming 400 years later, if that is correct, is of no consequence whatsoever in the context of propaganda commissioned for consumption by an Elizabethan audience. Still, if you don’t care for Hall, let’s turn next to Foxe.


But why would it need to, why would it see a need to? Nevertheless, I’ve always understood this to be a crucial aspect of your theory and can see its attractions for Oxfordians. The essence is “why this particular peer was destitute in the first place.” Let me not distract you, what in your view is the ‘other half of the story’?

Clive

I've been watching this exchange in much the same way that camera wags show attendents at Wimbledon. My neck is tired and tells me that I should mention John Dee and Giordano Bruno. They wanted it all to stop, according to the things I have read; but the birds ate the crumbs of bread I left to find my way out. This certainly involves Elizabeth directly if contemporary evidence (that Dee was her astrologer) and possibly a supporter (if not the founder) of her ecumenicism. Bruno died for his support of a return to the safer turf of Hermetics. Dee escaped, but not until he had been understood by many in the lower echelons of Elizabethan society. I have come across mentions of him in a book on the intellectual and scientific life of London. I still have it and when I get through with re-filing all (ALL) my books and papers I may find it.

I guess my point is this thread places all the religious load on the street fighting between cathedral, church, and chapel. Why could Lord Edward not have shared with Dee and his ruler the desire to resolve, to link (as one of your posts avers) the two sides with what it is they have in common. Of course the answer for Dee and Bruno was "get the f--- out of the way; we know how to argue this!"

Blessings from Joe

Joe,

Sorry to learn that you, and probably others, are finding the thread a pain in the neck. Still, it's at least heartening that you are watching it from the middle of the court, so to speak, rather than being partisanly ensconced at one end.


What is it that "the two sides [had] in common," do you think?


And upon you.

Clive